2017 Symposium

The vast Great Plains creates a need for maps and a fascination with “place” that has never left us. From the earliest star charts to digital cartography, we have used maps to make sense of space and place. Join us in March 2017 for a conference that invites exploration of maps in cartography, but also in a metaphorical sense of how we use concepts of “mapping” to understand the region’s people, culture, and land.

Sponsors & Partners

2017 Great Plains Symposium

Lincoln, Nebraska | March 30-31, 2017 | Innovation Campus

Cost: $45, open to the public | Student rate: $20

“Flat Places, Deep Identities: Mapping Nebraska and the Great Plains” The 2017 Great Plains Symposium will examine the topic, “Flat Places, Deep Identities: Mapping Nebraska and the Great Plains.” In part it will commemorate the publication of the Atlas of the Great Plains (2011) and anticipate the publication of the Atlas of Nebraska (2017).

Why are maps so fascinating? What do they tell us, what assumptions were necessary to construct them, how do they shape our knowledge? The symposium calls for a critical reexamination of maps and the mapping of our region.

This topic is also to be understood figuratively, inviting us to consider the myriad ways in which “maps,” “mapping,” and “place” shape all aspects of how we see and understand the Great Plains. Thus included in our topic are questions of how place and mapping are used in or influence identity and culture, economy and society, agricultural practices, natural resources, environmental issues, business strategy, art and creative expression, literature of place, social relationships, politics and social movements, “deep mapping,” and any other ways in which concepts of mapping and place are revealing and useful.

Papers accepted for presentation at the “Flat Places, Deep Identities” symposium will be considered for publication in thematic issues of Great Plains Quarterly or Great Plains Research.

Conference schedule:

Schedule as of January 2017, subject to change

Thursday, March 30

3:30 - 5 p.m.: Guided tour and activity at Constellation Studios of a related exhibition, "Unflolding the Map." Shuttles will run from Embassy Suites to the gallery and back.

5:30 p.m.: Reception at innovation campus with hor d'oeveres and beverages (included in registration). Shuttles will run from Embassy Suites to Innovation Campus for the reception and keynote.

7:30 p.m.: Keynote, auditorium, Innovation Campus

"Maher"

Crossing Saskatchewan, Susan Maher, University of Minnesota Duluth, author of Deep Map Country: Literary Cartography of the Great Plains

Friday, March 31: All activities at Innovation Campus

Shuttles will run from Embassy Suites to Innovation Campus from 7:30 -8:30 a.m. Shuttles will run from Innovation Campus to Embassy Suites from 4:45 to 5:30 p.m.

A Cartographic History and Analyses of Indian-White Relations in the Great Plains, Dan Cole chief cartographer of the Smithsonian Institution, co-author of Mapping Native America: Cartographic Interactions between Indigenous Peoples, Government, and Academia

"Atlas" | Auditorium

Mapping Nebraska and the Great Plains: A Conversation with the editors of the Atlas of Nebraska and the Atlas of the Great Plains, Clark Archer, David Wishart, Don Wilhite, Les Howard, & Richard Edwards

Noon: Plenary

"Schulten" | Banquet Hall

Competing Visions of the Great Plains in the Mid-Nineteenth Century, Susan Schulten, University of Denver, author of Mapping the Nation: History and Cartography in Nineteenth-Century America (lunch is included in registration)

1:45-3 p.m.: Concurrent Block 2

"Nebraska" | Room A1

Origins of Nebraska’s Frontier Settlers, John Bauer

Nebraska’s Bedrock Geologic Map: Old Insights Made New, Matt Joeckel

Nebraska’s “Centennial Literary Map” Turns Fifty, Kyle Wyatt

"Identities" | Room A2

Whiteclay Project, Rebekka Schlichting (moderator)

Race, Ethnicity, and Ancestry on the U.S. Great Plains, 2010-2012, Jon Kilpinen

"Lines" | Room A3

East River and West: Reconsidering Hundredth Meridian Culture in the Dakotas, Maxine Allison Vande Vaarst